0 dribbles, 2 shots: The Nottingham Forest who struggled in 1-0 defeat v Luton Town

Luton Town earned an enormous 1-0 win over Nottingham Forest in the Saturday lunchtime kick-off thanks to Kal Naismith’s first half penalty.

The result stalled Forest’s outside automatic promotion bid in what was a very frustrating match for Steve Cooper’s men.

The Reds had a second half Djed Spence goal wrongly disallowed for offside, and created the better chances from open play, but the Hatters’ rearguard stood firm as they picked up a vital three points.

Luton showed the way to may other clubs, in stopping the route to Brennan Johnson at source with a high press throughout the first half at Kenilworth Road.

Johnson struggled to impact the game as much as he usually can, and Nathan Jones deserves high praise for the way the Hatters negated his threat.

The Welshman was limited to two shots in the game, one was a hopeful long range effort that was blocked and the second comfortably saved by James Shea.

Johnson has been so ruthless of late that Luton knew they could not afford to give him any space and time on the ball, and they handled Forest’s threat very well for dealing with the 20-year-old.

Johnson did not complete a single dribble in the game, according to WhoScored.com, which speaks volumes to how well Reece Burke and Amari’i Bell defended against him, silencing the Wales international particularly well in the first half.

Johnson finished the game with a pass accuracy of 71% and a WhoScored rating of 6.1.

Spence was still a threat, as were the usual suspects for Forest with Philip Zinckernagel making an excellent impact off the bench, and coming so close to levelling proceedings with an audacious effort that bounced back off the upright.

Johnson will be desperate to make up for the loss in the remaining fixtures,